BoilerBroJoe

I think the important thing here is that Mario had a voice long before Charles Martinet, and it was perfect. Does Lou Albano have a son and is it too late to replace Chris Pratt?

It was most likely Super Mario Bros. since that was the NES pack-in and game everyone was crazy about at the time. But I also remember playing Major League Baseball (and being bored to tears by the endless blue stat screens you would need to navigate before getting to the less monochrome baseball game).

If anyone wants a free authentic copy of the Banjo-Kazooie soundtrack, you'll find it at the bottom of the Upper Bay in New York City, after a rainstorm swept my Discman away and popped the CD off the side of the Staten Island Ferry.

So Mario speaking in full sentences is Jar Jar Binks?

@eltomo Ah, you're right! I definitely recognized Kageyama's voice from the game, but hadn't listened to the songs in a while so I had assumed they just used the same singer. Shame on me, I need to work on my Goemon cred. But it's nice to know there's always more to learn!

Oh crap! It's the guy who sings "I am Impact"! I need this guy to sing at my wedding.

@Kang81 Strange New Worlds is the only one I’ve liked since 2009. And even with that show I need to tell myself it’s a remake, not a prequel (despite what the creators claim). If I do that, I’m able to enjoy the stories and tone for the most part.

That said, the most recent episode soured me considerably, for a number of reasons. So the jury is back out, but overall it’s been an improvement so far.

@RantingThespian I agree - as a kid I assumed each series would get at least a couple movies. It's really a shame they didn't. Think of the kind of cinematic universe they could have built with those three shows, ten years before Avengers.

I also don't understand why they don't put DS9 on blu-ray. I know about the whole compositing problem, but at least re-scan the original scenes that lacked special effects, and then upscale the rest, like they did with Babylon 5. A visually uneven release would still be better than no release at all, in my opinion.

Kamaitachi no Yoru or bust.

This is why I kinda think comment sections need to largely go the way of the dodo (and I’m fully aware of where I’m writing this). They’re appropriate for some things, but not every place of information needs to allow anonymous commentary by the public. I’m sure there are plenty of corporate advertising teams out there that insist on maximizing “audience engagement”, but if it’s going to result in the whole affair being stopped (or even just unhealthy levels of stress for those producing the content) then what’s the point?

People absolutely should behave better, but us saying what ought to be so is not going to make it so. This will never stop, outside of a post-scarcity utopia where everyone is content enough not to project their lack of fulfillment on to trivial matters. And even then I’m not so sure. Just get rid of comment sections. And Twitter while we’re at it.

P.S. Yes, all my best to the Monkey Island team. I’ve never even played the games and I’m still excited to try this new one.

What the report doesn’t point out is that all the raw materials are cardboard.

I remember after unlocking invisibility, my friends and I would go around levels planting remote mines under guards to see how far we could launch them. That combo of AI and physics kinda made it one of the earlier 3D sandbox games, when you think about it.

Last game in the original creators' continuity? Maybe. Last game to use the IP? Definitely not.

The only thing that interests me much is Return to Monkey Island, but I wanted to play Secret of Monkey Island (and its sequel) on Switch first. Oh well.

As I said in another chat, when there's an E3 Nintendo does a full Direct and showcase in June. When there isn't it doesn't. 2020 E3 was canceled and Nintendo did several game specific and mini Directs. The same thing is happening this year.

I still think we will get something in the near future, because they're due to announce the new Mario Kart courses. But at this point it will probably be mid July at the earliest, and they could even just announce those courses in a video tweet.

I'm assuming it's just a matter of Sega and the Jackson estate being able to agree on a licensing fee in the past and not being able to in this instance. I mean, they should have seen this coming, collaborating with the most popular artist of the era and not having a rock solid contract. But I guess the idea of constantly re-releasing classic games, or even of "classic games" in general, wasn't really a thing in the early 90s.

@Danrenfroe2016 As I said above, I think there are plenty of punishments we can use that don’t involve locking someone up. Of course the argument can always be pushed to “well what if they don’t pay their fine/show up for community service/etc.?” but it’s not like we’re all perfectly self sufficient creatures that don’t interact with a highly complex society in a variety of ways. If people continue to defy laws you can freeze their accounts, flag their travel documents and so on. Of course every rule has an exception and I’m sure there is some hypothetical where someone who’s not violent will need to be detained or jailed, but I think we could be more creative and deal with 99% of offenders out there. The point is we don’t try. We just fetishize prison as a punishment for people we are angry at, and sadly that leaves a lot of people hurt for doing a lot less than this guy.

I’ve never supported prison time for non violent crimes and I’m not going to start now. This guy is clearly a jerk and certainly no Robin Hood, but like Gary Bowser, he can be dealt with using economic punishments; fines, sanctions, community service, etc. Part of the reason our societies are so sick is because we’re so profoundly uncreative in solving problems using anything that’s not physical coercion.

I would waste my money for a digital version. But money for a physical version that will be played a couple times before collecting dust and further cluttering my disorganized life? Nah.

Question: why is it a certainty that a Nintendo Direct will happen around that time? When E3 was canceled in 2020, Nintendo didn’t have a proper Direct until August. I get that was peak COVID, but it didn’t stop other companies from putting out news or Nintendo from doing mini single-game-focused Directs. Nintendo did have a Direct last June but that was in the context of a digital E3. So it seems that this year actually has more in common with 2020 than 2021.

Of course I HOPE Nintendo has a Direct soon, and I think it’s entirely possible. But just not sure why people think it’s so certain.

Every single word any of us speaks is a borrowed/stolen/butchered word from a different language. I'm all for preserving linguistic diversity, but there's a difference between a language at risk of extinction and the natural evolution that every language undergoes. For example, let's take the phrase quoted above, "'jeu video en nuage". Are any of the words in that phrase currently at risk of being forgotten? French is one of the most spoken (and most learned) languages in the world, and those words will be well known to many millions for many more years to come. What these rules are about is exclusivity, not preservation. And I oppose exclusivity precisely because of the importance of linguistic diversity. Some scientists, I believe, have theorized that using words from different languages actually allow you to *conceive of things you'd be unable to with just one language, so borrowed words actually serve to expand one's capacity for expression and nuance.

Now yes, the government is welcome to have standards in its own official material, and I'm not suggesting that this is some violation of civil liberties. But official actions such as these set a tone and are meant to bleed down into mass discourse, so it's totally fair to criticize them.

@MW_Mania Well It's good to hear that DLC is being evaluated, and I mostly expected as much. But for me the main draw of this collection was the full range of releases/ports and not just the core four games, so I don't plan to buy until an upgrade is confirmed. Hope it's sooner rather than later!

So no plans for DLC with the other games? Yeah, not buying this then.

@FishyS another weirdo here. I agree cloud saving is essential which is why I wish they offered it for free. I may grab this free trial or pay for a month at some point down the line to update my cloud saves, but I don’t play anything online except occasionally the free games like Fortnite.

As for the retro games, maybe it’s just psychological, but I can’t bring myself to put time into playing anything that I may not have access to a few years down the line. I get all the arguments for a subscription service and I actually think it’s good for them to have it as an option for those who want it, but I wish they’d also let you buy the games and honor that purchase going forward as a company, rather than as a platform, the way Steam does. If they did that they’d have more of my money than either of us could imagine.

Shame that the 3DS is shutting down and can't re-implement the retro 3D effects back into the game. Are we just relegating 3D to the dustbin of history? Is there a reason Nintendo can't release a Switch with a 3D screen? I get that it's not everyone's thing, but I feel like we only ever scratched the surface of that market. Those Sega 3D Classics were beautiful and the New 3DS tech worked really well IMO.

Strange New World is okay, but I'm not a fan of most of the current series. I like my Star Trek like I like my philosophy classes. Lots of of conversations about morality and little to no lethal force.

Pleeeeeheeheeheeheeze!

Sigh, I need to brush up on my JRPG Credit: I pronounced this article's subtitle as "Why-sier said than done".

Oh damn, can I import one of them mugs?

I know not everyone likes it, but I adored DuckTales Remastered for bringing back the old voice cast too (and not a moment too soon, as Alan Young died only a few years later), so I'm really happy to see it happening again. Let's get some TaleSpin and Darkwing Duck games, Dotemu! Or better yet, Gargoyles!

Between them and WayForward, old franchises are getting a lot of love lately. And didn't WayForward recently tease a bunch of impressive IP they got their hands on?

Guys, you don’t get it. Anakin saw the future where all of the younglings grew up to become genocidal maniacs themselves. He had to become one genocidal maniac in order to save the galaxy from a hundred genocidal maniacs!

@Sarkos I agree. They should just add a cheats feature, and expand the number of save state slots so you can keep your progress separate if you want to.

Give us Body Harvest, you cowards!

Man, I kind of miss some of this 90s humor.

I understand/respect that some people like Star Trek for different reasons than I do, and I also understand that this is the “dark” timeline (where did they come from, the “slightly-less-dark” timeline?). But for me at least, the dissonance of the two statements “Star Trek fans have arguably never had it better” and “Jean-Luc Picard killed Yoshi” pretty much sums it up.

It actually sounds like mostly good news to me. Sure, it could have been better in some places, but the changes are all things I can live with, and in some cases I'm not actually a fan of the old style. Resolution and performance are both good and that's a big plus.

You heard it here first, folks. Video games will end war!

@Tandy255 That's fair, but I'm sorta of getting tired of all the different game collections with all the different menus, and user interfaces and features. That's what made Virtual Console so good (and it would make NSO pretty great too, if you could actually buy the games). That said, I'm all for offering games in big bundles as well as individually.

My only hope is that, with the 3DS shop closing, a handful of these may make the jump to Switch. It's happened before, though rarely (still waiting for the WiiWare ReBirth Series...). Attack of the Friday Monsters is absolutely lovely. I even managed to track down the soundtrack, which is gorgeous and composed by Hideki Sakamoto, who composed Lifelight for SSBU.

Hamster is doing God's work, truly. Especially in light of recent subscription debates.

I get that's how these subscriptions work, and it's also why I'm not interested. But in all honesty, I think the only reason I hate NSO is because it's locking away their legacy games. If NES/SNES/N64 games were also available to buy for a couple bucks, as well as available to play for free with a subscription, then heck, I'd certainly dive in. I'd use the subscription to play games I'm not interested in owning and I'd still probably buy a small handful of classic games that I want to have as long as my Switch works. But as it stands, I DON'T want to subscribe because doing so is supporting the ransom of their back catalog.

When I want to watch a movie, I stream it. When I want to OWN a movie, I buy it. And thankfully I don't need to own three generations of proprietary DVD players from every major film studio to legally own their most celebrated films. So why is it okay for video games?

@mandlecreed Agreed. Mario Kart 7 has the best of all the Rainbow Road themes, for its callback but also its original parts and its variation between the two sections of the track. They don't need to do much to the theme except polish up the sound quality. And the track is pretty great too.

@Silly_G @rjejr Oh man, really....? Ugh.

Okay, I don't currently have Nintendo Switch Online, so here's my question. If I pay the $50 to get NSO + Expansion Pack today, can I then "purchase" the Mario Kart 8 DLC on the eshop for free and have it locked in even if my NSO expires before the rest of the DLC is released? Or do I somehow lose access to that DLC after my subscription lapses. I THINK it's the former, but with predatory companies everywhere, I really want to make sure.

Also, yes, I will be one of the three people left on Earth who will now buy Mario Kart 8 for Switch.

My work from home day at 5PM? Oh, perfection.

Oh, interesting! I must have missed this news the first time around. Those additions are definitely appreciated, but I wonder if the original Japanese release version will be included as an option or bonus mode.

Welp, mark it down. The time is 10:21 EST on February 6, 2022 and now all of the major third party games I wished would come to Switch have finally arrived. Before this was the Ezio Collection, BioShock trilogy, Alien: Isolation and a few others. The only one left, which may or may not be “major” depending on who you ask, is Rare: Replay. Come on Microsoft, you know you want to!

Uh, no. No one should be in prison for five years for a non violent crime. A lot of people here are saying “he shouldn’t get away with it”. You’re absolutely right. Paying $14.5 million for a crime that netted him $320,000 sounds more than fair to me.

I only needed to see the headline to know the author was Kate. Bravo, comrade!

Nationalize Microsoft!